Great Britain's Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, left, and Adam Gemili react after the men's 4x100 metres relay at the Olympic Stadium. Photograph: John Walton/PA

It is fast becoming a tedious punchline to a tiresome joke: What did Great Britain's 4x100m relay team do with the baton? Answer: fail to get it around the track.

The joke was repeated again on Saturday as Adam Gemili, who was running the second leg for the GB A team in the absence of the injured James Dasaolu, was unable to deliver the baton to James Ellington.

They could only watch with hands covering half their eyes as Racers Track Club, led by Usain Bolt, came within two-tenths of the world record as they sauntered to victory in 37.75sec.

No wonder the British team was frustrated: they reckoned that a national record was within their grasp on this ultra-fast track and hoped to also lay down a marker before the world championships. Their belief that they can get a medal is not misplaced – but only if they can get the fundamentals right.

This was the sixth time in five years that a British 4x100m men's relay team has failed to get the baton round in accordance with track and field's rules and regulations.

It happened during last year's Olympics when Gemili was out of the changeover box when given the baton. At the 2012 European championships when Christian Malcolm was unable to steer the baton into Dwain Chambers's outstretched palm. At the 2011 worlds, the 2010 Europeans and the 2008 Olympics too.

There have been so many acts of almost cartoonish buffoonery that you wonder whether the physical issue of baton to hand has become mental too.

Chambers, who ran the first leg and was able to make a smooth transition to Gemili, was left almost laughing in exasperation but insisted the British team could turn things round. "We have to work together and pull together and will have to learn from this," he said.

He denied that Dasaolu's withdrawal due to a tight hip flexor had made a difference. "The only real change was me to Adam," he said. "We haven't done any work so I just told Adam to run safe in case these old legs couldn't keep up. We did a fair change, but I'm not sure what happened through second and third.

"We were going for the British record – we were due to do that – we have a great team. We've had fantastic relay performances throughout the summer, but on this occasion we didn't get it round, but we've still got Moscow to come."

Bolt was able to reflect on another gloriously successful spell in London after adding a relay victory to his win in the 100m on Friday night. "It was good running with my team-mates, especially the guys I see every day so it was nice," he said.

"We haven't run a lot of relays together but just being around each other every day we can understand each other and we know how fast we are personally so it worked out really well."

When asked whether he would be back, he smiled. "It is brilliant, I love it. But it depends on what the tax laws say, if they say it's OK I will be here next year." His team-mate Mario Forsythe suggested that a world record might have been on. "We could've run a better race, but the transitions were really poor," he suggested. That might have been true, but the British team would have killed for them on this particular occasion.

The Associated Press has reported that Tyson Gay, the second-fastest 100m of all time, has failed more than one drug test this year. According to the agency, Gay recorded one of his positives at the US championships in June, where he won the 100m and 200m as well as an out-of-competition test in May.

One person familiar with the case told the AP that multiple positives over a short period of time are a sign of an athlete who wasn't trying to hide anything, but simply didn't know he was taking a banned drug. The people did not want their names used because the doping case against Gay is ongoing and the details have not been made public.